2007 MFA Fine Art Thesis Exhibition

Natalie Aguilar
Bridget Barnhart
Lina Bokhary
Benjamin Carder
Iris Charabi-Berggren
Amanda Curreri
Anne Devine
Jennifer Durban
Frank Anthony Ebert
Patricia Esquivias
Heather Feeney
Renee Gertler
Katherine Gritt
David Gurman
Jessalyn Haggenjos Barr
Amanda Herman
Marnia Johnston
Robin Johnston
Bessma Khalaf
Melanie C. Lacy Kusters
Sarah Marie Lewallen
Christopher Loomis
Samuel Lopes
Celia Manley
Jack Miller
Carrie Anne Minikel
Elizabeth Mooney
Nyeema Morgan
Harry Muniz
Alison Naschke-Messing
Jennifer O'Keeffe
Karen Olsen-Dunn
Katina Papson
Lee Pembleton
Ryan Pierce
Lacey Jane Roberts
Amy Rose Sampson
Erik Scollon
Marsha Shaw
Shawn Sloan
Reggie Stump
Gabrielle Teschner
Julie Ann Travis
Carly Troncale
Lindsey White
Tom Wiehl
Christine Wong Yap
Jenny Zito

Christine Wong Yap
 
Untitled (one half gallon)
8" x 8" x 1"
paper
2006
 
Artist Statement
I make drawings, prints, paper cuts, sculptures and installations. Recurring themes include social skepticism, sarcasm, failure, the inadequacy of daily life, language and humor. More recent projects explore personal transformation, happiness and good attitudes. For example, I make sculptures of (absent) presents to reference value and the possibility of material objects conveying intangible emotions. In a series of works on paper, I propose inventions for personal improvement and remedying minor inconveniences. My language-based works present quotidian texts—such as to-do lists, grocery lists, and imagined dialogues—as illegible masses, suggesting anxiety and failure. My work is characterized by my ambivalence towards optimism and pessimism. Though I would like to be an optimist, I am a resolute realist. For me, pessimism is rooted in “shittiness”—quotidian tribulations in corporeal reality. Optimism, on the other hand, suggests transcendence. I see an analogous paradox in art: conceptual art must be materialized (but materials are often mundane and ubiquitous, like photocopies or common art supplies), and yet art is still expected, quite optimistically, to convey the ineffable, to illuminate the unknowable. I don’t expect—but still aspire towards—redemption through the act of creating art.

Contact
info@ChristineWongYap.com


©2007 California College of the Arts. All rights reserved.